By Charles Jay
As VietBet customers know, the new appointment of a World Cup coach is always going to come with some controversy, but as the coach for the United States team in 2014 World Cup, Jurgen Klinsmann has ruffled some feathers before the finals have even begun. For one thing, he cut the team’s most recognizable player off the squad. Landon Donovan, a three-time World Cup veteran who is also the team’s leading scorer in international competition, was not a part of the 23-man roster, leading one anonymous soccer “insider” to suggest that if there were 23 better players than Donovan on the team, the Americans should easily be in the semi-finals.
When you make moves like Klinsmann made, you are going to invite that kind of thing. And rightfully so. When you cut Donovan, you are saying that you have enough talent that you don’t need him. So we shall see.
Klinsmann seemingly sought to take some of the pressure off his players and the situation by professing that he really doesn’t expect his team to actually WIN the World Cup, but that has brought some backlash among many of the more optimistic fans in the United States (including plenty of VietBet patrons, no doubt). One of those fans, as it turns out, was Donovan himself, who had been immediately snatched up as an ESPN commentator.
Seemingly interested in creating some distance between himself and his would-be coach right away (after his acceptance of the job pissed off U.S. Soccer authorities, since he was still eligible to be added to the roster), Donovan said, “We believe that we will win. I think that’s the way Americans think and I think that’s the sentiment.”
Regardless of what Klinsmann says or does, there is tremendous pressure on this program as it faces a team that it feels it can certainly beat, but which has essentially knocked it out of contention in the last two World Cup competitions. That’s Ghana, in a game that begins at 6 PM ET in Natal.
Here are the World Cup betting lines as they are laid out at VietBet on this very critical game for the U.S. team:
The World Cup Championship
USA vs. Ghana
Monday, June 16 – 6 PM ET
Arena das Dunas, Natal
Betting Odds – Handicap Line: Ghana pick -137, United States pick +122
Betting Odds – Moneyline: Ghana +145, United States +213, Draw +253
Total: Under 2.5 (-111), Over 325 (-104)
The U.S. finds itself in (Group G), which for this tournament is the “Group of Death,” with not only today’s opponent, but also two world powers, Germany and Portugal. So they will be playing against some of the world’s absolute best, including Portugal’s legendary Christiano Ronaldo.
In case you are not aware, Klinsmann is a part of the fabled history of German soccer, as a member of the World Cup championship team of 1990, and it is this, along with his tenure as head coach for Bayern Munich, that brought him the job with the U.S. squad, replacing Bob Bradley, who fell into much disfavor after a loss to Mexico in the Gold Cup in 2011. It is said that Donovan’s short tenure as a player at Bayern Munich did not impress Klinsmann all that much, and that may have been one of the contributing factors to Donovan being cut.
As VietBet customers in the U.S. are painfully aware, Asamoah Gyan was Ghana’s hero in the World Cup win over the U.S. four years ago, but the Black Stars went further than that – to the quarterfinal round, in fact – and in the end, it was a miss by Gyan on a penalty kick that prevented Ghana from winning right then and there and eventually led to a shootout, in which Uruguay emerged victorious.
Advocates of Klinsmann, one of the great strikers of his time, believe that under his leadership, the United States will be a more effectively aggressive team, but detractors are quick to point out that like Bradley, Klinsmann is not addressing what is perceived by many World Cup bettors and soccer observers in the U.S. as being some serious deficiencies on the defensive end. Ghana is hardly a lesser-light, but such things certainly stand to become exposed as the U.S.goes form here to face Germany and Portugal.
And finally, is weather going to be a factor? There is no question that it could be. There has been heavy rains around Natal and flood warnings in the area.
